


Punch a Hole Through the Night

by abi z (azephirin), azephirin



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Background Slash, F/M, Force Ghosts, Ghost Sex, Multi, Post-Rogue One, a little bit AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-02 01:02:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/abi%20z, https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: Every day the dreamers die to see what's on the other side.





	Punch a Hole Through the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from "[In God's Country](http://www.macphisto.net/u2lyrics/In_Gods_Country.html)," by U2. Also, I would like everyone to know that I'm posting this fic from a boat.

She blinks awake, but it’s not like waking up: there’s no languor, not even any lingering sleepiness, just the knowledge that now she is conscious when previously she was not.

Cassian is in her arms. He’s still holding her tightly, and she can feel him breathing against her, but steadily now rather than the sharp and uneven breaths of exhaustion and pain. His hair against her face is soft and tickles a little. Jyn sifts her fingers through it lightly, just enough to enjoy its texture and Cassian’s accompanying closeness. Everything is quiet, and there’s no pain. Maybe it’s a dream. Jyn decides she doesn’t care.

That’s when Cassian inhales roughly and pushes her away and shouts, “What the hell!”

Not a dream, then. At least she doesn’t think so.

This might have been the beach, but the water is gone—vaporized by the blast, maybe—and little else remains, just scattered debris and the skeletal remains of a few trees. The silence is overwhelming: no sentient beings, no animals, not even waves or a breeze. Maybe a dream, Jyn thinks. A nightmare.

Cassian is shaking, looking around in confusion and what appears to be no small amount of anger. “What the fuck,” he says, low and furious, turning to take in their surroundings and then to face Jyn again. “What the fuck,” he spits, like this is her fault. “We’re supposed to be dead!”

A memory, faded and thin, comes to her: sitting in her mother’s lap with her hand on the kyber necklace. Jyn can remember the sensation of it, and how small she must have been, because her fingers didn’t reach all the way around. _So where do we go, Mama? If we don’t stay here forever?_ Jyn’s mother had wrapped her own fingers around Jyn’s then. _We become one with the Force. For some people, that means their spirits are at rest._ Jyn had nodded. _Like being asleep?_ And her mother had answered, _Exactly like being asleep. But others stay with the living Force, even if their bodies aren’t alive anymore, because they’re called to guide the living, or because their work isn’t done._

“I think—” Jyn starts, then falters; but as she looks again at what used to be Scarif, she becomes more sure. _Because their work isn’t done._ “We’re dead, Cassian.”

“That’s impossible,” he says. “If we were dead, we’d be dead. Gone. Blown to pieces by that shockwave.” Jyn flinches at the image, which she’s increasingly sure is accurate. “If we were dead, we wouldn’t be standing here having a fucking conversation!”

She looks him in the eye. “There is literally no way we survived that,” Jyn says. “Look around. You’re right. Everything did get blown to pieces. You think we got away any better?” This time he’s the one to flinch. “Look at yourself,” she adds, gentler, more certain with every word. “Your hand.” Bloody as they held each other and awaited death; clean now. She walks over to him and puts her own hand on his chest, over the spot where Krennic shot him. “Right here. It’s like nothing happened. Do you have a better explanation?”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” Cassian says, so low that it’s almost a whisper.

_Does it hurt, Mama? When people go to the Force?_

_It can hurt to die,_ her mother had said. But Jyn doesn’t remember any pain, just the blinding light of the oncoming blast. _But in the Force, there is no pain._

She reaches up to touch the familiar weight of the crystal, tucked inside the collar of her shirt. She’s dressed the same as when she boarded what became Rogue One—shirt, vest, gloves, utility pants, blaster belt, necklace—but everything is as clean as the minute she’d put it on: no blood, no dirt, no tears.

“Our work isn’t done,” Jyn says.

“What are you talking about?” he responds. The anger has drained away; he sounds almost resigned.

“If our work was done,” Jyn says, “maybe we’d be at rest. Not here. But there must be more for us to do. The Death Star is still up there. The Empire still exists.”

Cassian looks back at the bleak remains of the base, then turns back to Jyn. “What work? This place is a fucking wasteland, and we’re stuck in it.”

“We’re not stuck.” Jyn doesn’t know how she knows this, but she’s sure.

“What, you think our ride is going to show up?”

She rolls her eyes at Cassian and sits down on the sand. She’s not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, not in pain—none of the things she’d have expected after the past day. “There’s a way off this planet. We just have to figure out what it is.”

Cassian doesn’t answer, and when Jyn turns around to look at him, he’s pacing up and down the beach. His feet leave no tracks, and she can’t hear the sound of his steps in the sand—abruptly, she shivers. It’s like he’s not there. Neither of them are. Ghosts, she thinks. We’re ghosts, and we are alone in a wasteland.

She gets back up, and she sees that the sand where she was sitting is utterly undisturbed, as though no being ever touched it. She feels sick, suddenly, and wonders how that is even possible when she has no physical body.

“Cassian,” Jyn says, and he stops his pacing. She goes over to him and slides her hands under his jacket, just enough to feel the solidity and warmth underneath, even those things do not actually exist, at least not in the living world. He puts his arms around her, and she rests her head against his shoulder. He pushes the loose ends of her hair back behind her ears, and none of these things are real, except that they are.

“You really think you can get us out of here?” he says as his fingers tangle in her hair, worrying it like a strand of beads. His voice is, unaccountably, a little bit hopeful.

She takes a breath as the idea comes to her. “I think…so Chirrut sensed me through the kyber crystal in my necklace. Because of the Force energy. And we don’t have physical bodies, so we should be able to go anywhere, right? So if I can find someone in the Force, maybe I can take us to where they are.”

Cassian lifts his head from her shoulder and gives her a deeply dubious look.

“Do you have a better idea?” Jyn asks, archly.

“No,” he admits, and goes back to gently twisting her hair around his fingertips. It feels nice. “Who are you going to try to find?”

Jyn sighs and lets Cassian take some of her weight. I don’t have weight anymore, she thinks, but it still feels as though she does: as though when Cassian holds her and kisses the top of her head, he’s supporting her as much as he would if they were standing still made of muscle and bone and blood and breath. “That’s the problem,” she says. “The only people I know—knew—in the rebellion were you, and Chirrut and Baze, and Bodhi, and K2, and Saw, and we’re all…” She trails off.

“All dead,” he finishes quietly. They’re both silent for a moment. “But you said this…ghost thing, or whatever it is, it happens to people who have the Force. Which I don’t even fucking believe in, but set that aside for a minute. Chirrut had the Force, a lot of it. And Baze’s cannon, but also the Force. So he’s probably…like we are.”

Jyn pushes back to look at Cassian. “And he sensed me, so I should be able to find him.” They stare at each other for a moment, and then Jyn adds, “But I have no idea how.”

“I’m guessing there aren’t Force callsigns.”

“If there are, it’s not like anybody ever trained me in them.” She puts her head back on his shoulder. She can do that now, as much as she wants, in this weird half-world that they’re in. Cassian’s hand runs slowly up and down her spine, and Jyn wonders whether he’s thinking the same thing.

Out of nowhere, it comes to her. “On the way in,” Jyn says. “When we had to get through the shield gate. I—I can’t explain what I did, exactly. But I reached out, and I found the communications engineer, and it was like…it was like turning a knob. Like figuring out how to open a door.”

“To make him let us through?”

“To make him want to let us through.”

“Shit.”

“Right. But—he was a stranger, and I don’t even know whether he had any Force sensitivity, and I found him anyway. If I can find a stranger, I can find Chirrut.”

“If he’s out there.”

“He’s there,” Jyn says, because he has to be.

Jyn moves her hand between them to wrap her fingers around the kyber crystal. After a moment, Cassian’s hand follows and covers hers. The first time she did this was an accident, almost a desperate prayer, and she’s not sure how to go about it intentionally and with someone else depending expectantly on her.

She pictures Chirrut—his lean strength; his face, variously serene and intense and full of humor—but then her vision expands to a sense that’s not quite sight: Chirrut’s certainty, his strength in the Force, his encompassing love for Baze.

Suddenly she and Cassian are elsewhere, still holding each other, still holding the kyber crystal.

“Hello!” says one voice, cheerfully.

“Little sister,” says another, less effusive but no less welcoming.

Chirrut and Baze, both sitting on a bench outside what Jyn recognizes as the command center on Yavin 4. They’re instantly recognizable, even though both appear about twenty years younger and wearing temple robes. Baze’s hair is significantly shorter, barely brushing his earlobes; it’s a little shaggy but thick, untangled, and clean. His beard and goatee are neatly trimmed. Both of their faces are unscarred, unlined—unmarked by hardship and tragedy.

“You’re here!” Jyn bursts out.

“I looked for this fool in the Force,” Baze says, “and I found him.” His arm is around Chirrut.

“I didn’t need to look for Baze,” Chirrut replies comfortably from where he’s tucked against Baze’s side. “His sunny disposition shone like a beacon.”

Even Cassian is smiling.

Jyn stands still for about half a second before crossing the room in a bound and hugging them both. Baze starts in surprise but reciprocates; Chirrut returns the embrace without hesitation. They and Cassian thump one anothers’ backs in a very manly fashion.

“So tell us what’s going on,” Cassian says, returning to the terse intelligence operative that he was in life. “How much did we miss?”

Chirrut and Baze look at each other, and it’s not a promising look.

“What happened?” Jyn says.

Chirrut and Baze look at each other again. It’s dimly familiar, and Jyn realizes where she knows it: her parents, when they had bad news they didn’t want to deliver.

“Tell us,” she persists, and Baze sighs.

“They don’t know where the plans are,” he says.

“What the hell do you mean, they don’t know where the plans are?” Cassian says.

“We transmitted them,” Jyn says. “To Admiral Raddus, on the _Profundity_. They got there. We saw the transmission ourselves.”

“They did get to the _Profundity_ ,” Baze says. “Which Darth Vader then boarded—”

“Fuck,” Cassian breathes, low and emphatic.

“Yeah. But the _Tantive IV_ was docked inside it, and Leia Organa was aboard the _Tantive_. We know that somebody managed to hand off the plans before the _Tantive_ launched, and that Leia Organa got them.”

“OK,” Jyn says, “and? Where’s the _Tantive_? Where’s Leia Organa?”

There’s another silence, and then Chirrut says, “Leia Organa was on her way to Alderaan to deliver the plans to her father. The Empire captured the _Tantive_ before it got there. Vader told the Senate that everyone on board the _Tantive_ was killed.”

“So the plans,” Jyn says. “After everything, the plans are back in the Empire’s hands. Which means it was useless. Everything we did—the fact that we all died—it was all for nothing.”

“No,” Cassian says. “That message is bullshit. Of course Vader would report that everyone on the _Tantive_ died—the Empire wants us to assume that the plans are lost.”

“The _Tantive_ was destroyed,” Baze says. “We know that for a fact.”

“So what if it was?” Cassian fires back. “Again, of course the Empire would destroy the ship, both as a practical matter and as an attempt to convince the Alliance that no one survived.” He glares at Chirrut. “Leia Organa is the bravest and most resourceful person in the Rebellion. If she had the plans, then she got them out somehow, even if we don’t know how yet. She did it.”

After a pause, Baze says, “You’re not even Alderaanian.”

Stiffly, Cassian responds, “One does not have to be from Alderaan to hold its princess in high regard.”

“High regard?” Chirrut says. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” But then he looks at Cassian and says, “I agree with you, as it happens. Not only because of the princess’ legendary fortitude, but because I have seen it in the Force.”

Surprisingly, Baze doesn’t roll his eyes or snort or make any one of a number of expressions of skepticism that Jyn would have expected. Instead, he just says quietly to Chirrut, “I hope you’re right,” and Jyn, taking Cassian’s hand again, hopes the same.

+||+||+

There’s not much to do, so they have a look around the command center. Jyn thinks she remembers it being more crowded, but of course she wasn’t here long before their mission left, and it’s the kind of place that has a lot of coming and going. But when Cassian says, “Fuck, it’s like a ghost town,” Jyn starts to get a sense of how many people, just like Cassian and herself, are permanently gone.

The mood among those who remain is similar to that among herself and her three ghostly companions. The four of them sit unnoticed in strategy meetings, which are largely filled with arguing: whether the Empire has the plans, whether Leia Organa is alive, whether to attack the Death Star even without the plans, whether to disband the Alliance like we should have done a week ago (Cassian starts yelling and cursing, and they leave the meeting until he calms down). They walk the woods of Yavin 4, never for very long for fear of missing news, but for quarter-hours here and there when the tension and grief throughout Massassi Base become unbearable.

The base is never completely quiet, but things slow down at night. The nocturnal species, sensibly, seem to take the overnight shift, along with some humans who are either night owls or unlucky. Without a physical body, Jyn isn’t tired, but a lifetime’s habit tells her that this time is for rest. Chirrut and Baze seem to agree, though Cassian protests, but undeniably there isn’t much going on. Though none of them need sleep, privacy is welcome, and they find two sets of empty sleeping quarters. They’re able to walk straight through the closed doors, which is bizarre but convenient.

Chirrut kisses Jyn’s forehead. “Better days are coming,” he says.

“You sound very sure of yourself,” Cassian says.

“Because I am,” Chirrut responds.

In the quarters that it seems they are to share, Jyn sits down on the neatly made bed—which stays just as neat despite her presence—while Cassian paces.

“Do you think we can sleep?” she finally asks.

“We don’t seem to need to,” Cassian says.

“No. But it’s something to do for seven or eight hours instead of pacing and waiting.”

“I don't think I could sleep even if I needed to.” But he sits down on the bed beside her, and they sit quietly for a few moments. “I am sure of Princess Leia,” Cassian says after a moment. “But even if she…doesn’t return, I'm starting to think you’re right—we have some purpose to fulfill. And if Leia Organa cannot bring back the plans, we will find them ourselves, or we will find another way.”

“Yeah,” Jyn agrees. “We keep going. They can disband the fucking Alliance if they want to, but we’re not going to give up.”

She doesn’t entirely understand this ghost business, because when she lies back against the pillow, she can feel it—spare and economical Rebel Alliance bedding though it may be—against her head and neck. But she can’t pull the blanket loose to cover herself and invite Cassian to share, and so she sighs and shrugs and looks up at him with a raised eyebrow. He kicks off his shoes, doubtless out of long habit though it doesn’t matter now, and so Jyn does the same. He lies down beside her on his back, as stiff as a plank despite her invitation. But when she presses her shoulder against his, he breathes out and relaxes, and even reaches over to take her hand.

“It would help if we could turn the lights all the way off,” Cassian says. They’re lowered: from Jyn’s brief experience on base while alive, she recalls that artificial lights are dimmed automatically at night in order to save energy, although they’re adjustable assuming that one physically exists to do so.

“They’re not bad,” Jyn says—the lights are bright enough that she and Cassian can see each other, but low enough that it would be hard to read a datapad unless it had some backlighting. She’s slept in far worse, and she’s confident that Cassian has too. “I just wish we had a blanket.”

“It’s not cold,” Cassian says.

“I don’t think we would feel it even if it was. It’s not about the actual temperature—it’s just nice to have a blanket.” Even in the prison on Wobani, each inmate had been issued a blanket, coarse and cheaply made though each had been.

It occurs to Jyn that their current forms—Cassian’s, Baze’s, Chirrut’s, and her own—are merely manifestations of how they see themselves: their clothing, their appearances, their skin and hair are nothing but projections of how they all once looked. If Chirrut can manifest ungrayed hair, and if Jyn can manifest her necklace, she decides that she most certainly can manifest a blanket.

Creating an imaginary blanket out of the Force, it turns out, requires far less effort than teleporting herself and Cassian from Scarif to Yavin 4: a moment’s concentration, and then a comfortingly heavy blanket is draped over herself and Cassian. It’s thick and brown—bantha wool, probably. Jyn remembers, in the way that something not precisely forgotten but also never before recalled comes to mind, that she had one like it on her bed at her parents’ farm. She remembers, for the first time in many years, burrowing her entire body under it on cold nights, and falling asleep in the close warmth that was a refuge when her parents kept the heat low to conserve energy. Curled up under that blanket, she never felt the cold.

“Oh,” Cassian says, sounding startled, and Jyn guesses that it’s probably a little weird to have bedclothes appear on you out of the ether. He runs his free hand tentatively over the top of the blanket, and then keeps it there, brushing his fingers back and forth like a child presented with a soft toy—it occurs to Jyn that he’s probably not aware he’s doing it. “This is nice,” he says after a moment, which, for Cassian Andor, is tantamount to composing a symphony in its honor.

Jyn turns over and tucks herself against Cassian’s side, and he wraps his arm around her without hesitation. It’s quiet, mostly dark, and now it doesn’t seem strange that he feels warm against her despite their incorporeal state. “I think I could sleep, actually,” Cassian says, and they do.

+||+||+

The second day is more or less like the first. There are more arguments about whether to disband the Alliance, whether to mount a rescue mission (but where to?), whether to launch a final attack on the Empire (but _Rogue One_ did, and look, look). Cassian doesn’t shout this time, just paces back and forth through the nearly empty corridors after the council has concluded its meetings without making any actual conclusions.

Baze and Chirrut retire to bed, or at least to somewhere, presumably their room, that is free of Cassian Andor pacing up and down it. Jyn and Cassian go down to the main level and drift around the mess hall in the hopes of overhearing some encouraging gossip, but Cassian keeps forgetting that the living—his former colleagues and, to the extent that he had them, friends—can’t see or hear him, and finally Jyn has to strong-arm him back upstairs before she bursts into tears watching this.

Jyn removes her shoes, gloves, vest, holster, and utility belt, and untwists the tie from her hair. At Cassian’s questioning glance, she shrugs and says, “It’s nighttime.” His eyebrows go up, and she adds, “Calm down, I’m not about to strip naked”—which, fascinatingly, causes him to turn bright red. It occurs to Jyn that she could probably shift her clothes into some kind of sleepwear, which would be more comfortable despite also being nonexistent. She considers the prospect, thinks of something she saw in an advertisement, and is suddenly wearing what feels like a long, flowing dress.

Jyn looks down at herself and cracks up. The gown is some kind of silk, absolutely the softest fabric she’s ever felt, more like gossamer than something humans could have made, and it’s also completely ridiculous: the straps are made of pearls, which are beautiful but which seems like they would be quite uncomfortable to sleep on, and the bodice features some kind of jeweled combobulation that sits right between her boobs. She’s even wearing matching shoes, heeled things that she could kick right off, which Jyn supposes is the point when wearing a getup like this to bed. She holds one up for Cassian’s inspection, but instead of sharing her amusement, he just turns a deeper red.

“Oh, come on, how can you not find this funny?” Jyn asks, but she concentrates again, and this time she’s wearing a soft and entirely uncontroversial white nightgown that looks similar to something she remembers her mother owning. It too resembles a dress, but a very voluminous one, and Jyn thinks it would be fantastic to wrap around herself and sleep in. “Better?” she says to Cassian, and he mutters something that Jyn decides, with the better part of her nature, she won’t pursue.

She settles herself beneath the bantha blanket and expects Cassian to join her, but he’s paused as if in thought. “So you just…thought of that, and it appeared?”

“Pretty much,” Jyn says. “Same as when I did the blanket.” She explains her theory about their manifestations of themselves and certain things around them.

Cassian closes his eyes and appears to be thinking very hard—and then he’s standing there in a comfortable-looking pair of loose pants and a tunic. For a moment his expression is sheer surprise, and then he appears pleased with himself. “That worked!” he exclaims.

Jyn claps.

Cassian snorts and climbs into bed next to her. He puts an arm around her without prompting, and his eyes widen when his hand slides across her shoulder and the material of the nightgown. “That feels amazing,” he says with what is nearly awe.

“If I have to be dead,” Jyn says, “I at least want to sleep in the softest thing I can think up.”

Cassian laughs a little and rubs the fabric between his fingers once more; then, to her surprise, he leaves it be and settles his hand in her hair. His fingers are gentle—maybe another surprise, but also maybe not—but their movement is a slow constant, worrying her hair like strands of beads. After a few moments, he gathers Jyn close, wrapping both arms around her, and they hold each other tightly. It’s an embrace that’s too intimate for public—even for the limited public that is themselves, Baze, and Chirrut—but that feels like drinking water after a long thirst. There is little comfort to be had in war—Jyn has known that since she was eight years old—which makes this closeness all the more precious and necessary. Cassian buries his face in her neck, and Jyn thinks she can smell the leather from his jacket and the clean, almost detergent scent of the cheap soap used on base. Maybe she’s hallucinating; it doesn’t matter.

“I have to hope,” Cassian says, low and rough. She can feel his lips move against her skin as he speaks. “I have to hope that Leia, or someone, got out, and that we’ll be able to keep fighting. If we can’t, and this is eternity, then it’s hell. I have to hope that we’re not in hell.” He’s shaking.

Jyn doesn’t have words of reassurance, because her own hopes are desperate and identical. “Me too,” she says, because it’s the truth.

Cassian looks up at her; their eyes meet, and then he kisses her hard. It’s a surprise only in its suddenness, and Jyn returns it, clenching one fist in Cassian’s hair and the other in the fabric of his tunic. That’s all they do for a while, kiss, hungry and demanding and eager to forget. Cassian’s hips are between her thighs, and Jyn can feel him hardening against her. He tries to push his hands up under the nightgown, and Jyn absolutely wants that, except that the gown is basically a tent in garment form, so he ends up just gathering a bunch of cloth between his fingers.

It occurs to Jyn that if she can magic a nightgown onto herself, she can probably magic it off too—and, indeed, she can. Cassian’s eyes widen when his hands go from the vicinity of her breasts to actually on them. He looks like he might be trying to formulate an apology, which Jyn forestalls by putting her hands over his. His eyes go even wider, and then he seems to make a decision, and he moves both of their hands aside to suck her nipple into his mouth with a biting kiss. It hurts as much as it feels good, and Jyn gasps, wraps her leg around his thigh, pulls him closer.

She yanks on the hem of the tunic, and Cassian pauses only for the second it takes to strip it off. The warmth of skin on skin is an overwhelming miracle. There are only two layers of fabric—the sensible underwear that she didn’t think to alter, his pants—between them now, and she’s wet enough that his cock is sliding over her clit with barely any friction. She arches up against it, angling where it feels good, and Cassian thrusts down. There’s no finesse to it, just heat and desperation and pleasure.

Cassian is making pleading guttural noises, and Jyn’s pretty sure they’re both surprised when his movements become erratic, his hands tighten on her, and he gasps, “Oh fuck—Jyn,” and comes in short but intense pulses that make everything even slicker and messier between them. His breath is harsh and uneven, and a sheen of sweat covers his back and shoulders. In other circumstances Jyn might be annoyed or frustrated, but right now she just holds Cassian until his pulse has slowed and his breathing is calmer. They have time. As is usual in her existence, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, but—and this is almost certainly a first—she knows they have time.

Cassian raises himself on his elbows and looks down at her. His face, if it’s possible, is even redder than before. “Fuck,” he says again, but in a much different tone. “I can do better than that. I may be goddamn dead, but I can do better than that.”

Jyn can’t help but laugh as she pushes his hair back out of his eyes. “Any proposals?”

He looks down between their bodies, and his eyes fill with hunger even though he’s just come. “Yeah,” he says, and throws the blanket to the floor. He pulls down the waistband of her underwear, but only a little, just enough to kiss her hipbones before he looks back up. “You’re so wet.” His voice is rough. “I can smell it.”

She raises an eyebrow. He tugs the underwear off, and then, as if by way of afterthought, his pants.

But then he just looks at her, taking her in like he’s never seen a vagina before, which Jyn is certain cannot be the case. “Fuck, that’s beautiful,” he says, and leans down to kiss the top of her pubis. He licks the wetness from the insides of her thighs, and Jyn squirms, because his tongue is so close and yet decidedly not where she would like it to be. He kisses her labia, like he also knows they’ve got time, and leisurely explores the area.

“Would you hurry the fuck up,” Jyn says.

Of course he doesn’t, because Cassian is an asshole who can obey orders in the field but apparently not in bed. He goes slow, because he’s already come and his sense of urgency is completely different from hers. He makes pleased noises as he explores her, and when she grabs his hair to speed him up, he just laughs.

She falls into it, though, the steady exploration of his lips and tongue, nothing showy, just unrushed strokes over her clit and around her cunt. She hears herself making noises, too, wordless ones that are almost whimpers, but she can’t bring herself to care. She pushes up against his mouth, and he gets his hands under her, hitches her up closer to him. He doesn’t go faster, exactly, but he goes more intensely, focusing on what makes her cry out, and she falls deeper, into orgasm, shuddering and gasping out his name.

Neither of them have lungs, and yet they both lie there panting for several minutes.

Jyn pulls the blanket back up over them, and they settle around each other. Cassian strokes her hair, winding his fingers in it loosely. It feels nice, and Jyn closes her eyes. They don’t need to sleep, of course, but it feels like the natural thing to do, rest against each other in the dark. She can feel Cassian’s chest rising and falling with breath, and it’s as reassuring as much as it’s an illusion.

“Maybe when we wake up,” Jyn says, “there’ll be good news.”

“Maybe,” Cassian says, and he sounds skeptical, but he doesn’t contradict her.

+||+||+

Cassian doesn’t need to contradict her. The news does just fine on its own.

Jyn wakes up like she’s been punched in the gut, breathless and sick, heaving and nearly weeping with pain and an unnamable fear. Cassian comes awake immediately, helping her sit up, rubbing her back. The small part of Jyn that is not wracked with misery recognizes the tightness of his face as near-panic. “Breathe,” he tells her, with a gentleness in his voice that’s entirely new to her. “Breathe with me, love. I’m going to count, OK? Inhale, deep as you can, one, two, three. Good girl. Now exhale, one, two, three. Inhale again, one, two, three. Exhale again, one, two, three.”

Jyn gets her breathing under control and collapses against him. She’s crying without even knowing why: the pain and fear themselves have disappeared, but their reverberations and the shock of the sensations haven’t worn off. She wants to stop crying—she’s witnessed and suffered far worse than what must have been some forgotten nightmare—but it still takes what feels like several minutes before the sobs stop. And that’s when she registers the shouts and screams from the corridors outside.

She and Cassian seem to remember simultaneously that they’re both naked, and then they’re both immediately dressed again in their normal clothes: utility pants, vest for her, jacket for him. They run out and nearly collide with Baze and Chirrut, both of whom look about as bad as Jyn feels. “What happened?” she says. Her voice sounds oddly normal, as though she hasn’t been choking and heaving—which of course she hasn’t, really.

“I don’t know,” Chirrut answers. “We both woke up—”

“Like from a nightmare,” Jyn finishes.

And then the word _Alderaan_ emerges from the chaos.

Groups of people are clustered around the viewscreens, and Jyn catches snatches of conversations— _not possible—gone—just…gone—my family…oh Force Mama, Daddy_. Someone collapses: he must be the Alderaanian. Others gather around him, helping him to sit up, rubbing his back the way Cassian did for her. But no one is really speaking to him, because what is there to say? Where are words when someone’s entire world is gone?

Jyn, Cassian, Baze, and Chirrut huddle against one of the walls. Jyn finds herself between Baze and Cassian, whose presences are comforting in different ways: Cassian’s wiry strength and the intimacy they know share, Baze’s warmth and solidity, and the knowledge of Chirrut, determined and indomitable, on his other side. Jyn thinks that it feels voyeuristic to watch the sorrow and grief—but the idea of leaving feels disrespectful, even though none of the living people in the room would be aware of it.

Later, unsurprisingly, there are arguments, many similar to those before _Rogue One_ ’s mission: _The Alliance should disband, the rebellion should stop, we can’t fight a weapon like that with no clue how to attack it. If Princess Leia were dead, we would know, the Empire would shout it everywhere, we should wait. But if even if she is alive, does she have the plans? And even if she does, how can she have kept them through Imperial captivity? No matter, we must fight on—the very existence of that weapon demands it. We can’t let another Alderaan happen._

Part of Jyn feels like shouting that giving up means the Empire has won, and they’ll be able to destroy as many Alderaans as they like, but the larger part of her knows that no one will hear no matter how loudly she shouts, and she puts her head on Cassian’s shoulder instead. He’s not crying, but he’s shaking, as though he’s using his entire body to keep from it.

Hours apparently pass. Some of the rebels mention the mess hall and leave, presumably to eat, but many return. Later, others leave to sleep. But many stay, as though leaving this room will take the knowledge of Alderaan’s destruction into the outside world and spread it like a disease into everyone’s reality.

The four of them don’t go anywhere, and after a while, out of a combination of boredom, shock, and desire to deny reality, Jyn falls asleep against Baze’s shoulder. She thinks Chirrut has, too, and Baze holds them both securely but carefully, like something precious and delicate entrusted to him, which is ridiculous because Jyn has never been delicate a day in her life.

+||+||+

They awake again to yelling, which isn’t much of a surprise, except that this yelling is different. It’s happy.

It’s coming from beneath them, which means that it’s an incredible amount of noise: there are no direct passages between floors, just elevators and probably a few carefully hidden stairwells. They start to run downstairs, but Chirrut—shockingly—throws out an arm to stop them. “Someone Force-sensitive has just arrived,” he says.

“So?” says Cassian, looking ready to take off again, but now Baze is shaking his head.

“Chirrut is right,” Baze says, even more shockingly. “There’s a good chance that person could see us. We should stay out of sight until we know who it is.”

“You can feel it too,” Chirrut tells Jyn, “though you will have to concentrate. But you found me—you can find…her. At least I think it’s a her. Strong but untrained.”

“Another reason to stay out of sight,” Baze says, “if this person doesn’t know she has Force ability.”

And it’s there, suddenly, like a lamp just lit: a bright flame of being, strong and determined and radiating such encompassing grief and sorrow that Jyn stumbles back a step. “Alderaanian,” she and Chirrut say at the same time, and then, “Princess Leia.”

There’s probably some ghostly way to teleport immediately downstairs, but given that all of them, even Chirrut, are still learning this spirit business, they hide behind a group of people in an elevator—not difficult, as their new selves take up no space.

On the ground floor, though, it’s impossible to see what’s happening: every rebel on Yavin IV has gathered in an impassible throng that seems to be a semicircle around the blast doors. Fortunately, the four of them can now walk through people, and while that skill remains disturbing, it’s also undeniably useful. Letting Chirrut, as the strongest in the Force and also the tallest, take the lead, they make their way forward until they’re able to peer through and around the assembled masses.

Just inside the blast doors there’s an unfamiliar ship, an odd circular shape with two symmetrical angular protrusions in front, and a second protrusion, possibly a cockpit, to one side. In front of it are standing Princess Leia, two droids, two unknown human men, and a Wookiee.

“I told you that Princess Leia Organa was the bravest and most resourceful person in the Rebellion,” Cassian says to Baze and Chirrut, who laughs, but joyfully.

General Draven shoulders through the crowd—Cassian’s posture suddenly goes straight—and the princess looks honestly relieved to see someone who isn’t yelling or waving their arms. “General,” she says with a nod, cutting off any awkward expressions of condolences for her planet or congratulations on her survival. “I dared not say so even in code, but I have placed the plans for the Death Star in this R2 unit. He will display them at your command.”

“Excellent work, Your Highness. Come with me to the war room, and we’ll put the plans on display.”

“Hey!” says the taller of the unknown men. He’s approximately Jyn’s complexion, tall, wearing a black vest, a while shirt, and a thigh holster over absurdly tight dark blue pants that bear, oddly, Corellian Bloodstripes. “Her Worship was captured by the drokking Empire and had her planet blown up, and you’re not even going to let her sit down and have, I don’t know, a shot of drokking whiskey which she richly drokking deserves?”

The Wookiee yelps agreement; the shorter of the unknown men says, “Han,” in a rebuking tone of voice; and Princess Leia glares at the one who is apparently named Han. He shrugs unrepentantly.

“We don’t have any time to lose,” the princess says, and, alright, Jyn kind of gets the appeal. Princess Leia looks at Han and adds, “I’ll take the whiskey in the war room,” and while her steely tone is unchanged, her eyes are somehow softer. He pulls out of a flask that was somehow concealed in his holster, and she catches it neatly.

Jyn desperately wants to go into the war room with Princess Leia and Draven to see the plans—the thing for which she, Cassian, Chirrut, and Baze gave their lives—and she suspects Cassian feels the same way, but Chirrut shakes his head. “It’s too small a space. If she’s able to see us, she will.”

As unusual as it is for Chirrut to voice reason, what he’s saying makes sense, little as Jyn likes it. Cassian grips her hand, and his mouth is tight, but he doesn’t protest. Instead, he says, “I have an idea.” He nods at Chirrut. “If what you’re saying is true, and Princess Leia will be able to see us, then our current states—whatever they are—could be an advantage. Jyn figured out how to get us here—to the base—from Scarif, and I’m assuming Baze and Chirrut figured out the same thing.” They both nod. “So, if we can go places, and we have a way to report what we observe there—”

“Spies for the Rebellion!” Chirrut exclaims, and actually fistbumps Cassian.

+||+||+

Leia Organa, as a princess and also probably as someone who was very recently a captive of the Empire, gets private quarters. Han (last name Solo, formerly of Corellia, hence the Bloodstripes) and the Wookiee (real name Chewbacca, association with Han Solo unknown) have been assigned quarters of their own, and the blond man (real name Luke Skywalker, formerly of Tattooine) turns out to be a lifelong friend of one of the Alliance pilots, whose double gets converted to a triple pending any better ideas.

They can’t exactly knock on Princess Leia’s door, so Jyn, over protest, gets deputized to go in and make sure she’s decent before the four of them appear unannounced in her living quarters. Which she is, and which they do, resulting in the scream they expect.

Princess Leia actually takes the news about her Force-sensitivity well: it turns out she was adopted and has no clue who her real parents are, so latent psychic ability, while surprising, doesn’t force her to reconsider her entire genetic makeup. “I’ve had worse surprises,” she says, and looks around at all of them. “I didn’t expect to be able to thank any of the members of _Rogue One_ in person, but the intelligence you gave the Rebellion is invaluable. Those plans will allow us to deal a significant blow to the Empire. Thank you.”

Alright, Jyn totally gets the appeal.

Chirrut smiles. “To that end, Your Highness, we have a proposition for you—and, indeed, for the Rebellion as a whole.”

Princess Leia accepts.

Their work, indeed, is not done.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this story, please [reblog it on Tumblr](https://azephirin.tumblr.com/post/180603105044/fic-punch-a-hole-through-the-night-rogue-one)!


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